Scotland

Those who love mysteries will love a vacation on Kauai, Hawaii.

Here’s the mystery: what’s it like on the Hawaiian island of Ni’ihau? This 550-square-mile island is the westernmost of the main Hawaiian islands and has been privately owned since 1864 by the Robinson family, which forbids tourists.

Ni’ihau (Nee-ee-how) clings to the sea, low on the horizon, visible from the southwest shore of Kauai, 17 miles away. Native Hawaiian is spoken there by the 200 or so residents. In fact, it’s the only place where native Hawaiian is a living language. Hawaiian is the language of the island’s K-8 school.

Ni’ihau residents travel freely between Kauai and Ni’ihau. They need to to get provisions for living on the dry island. Ni’ihau is a desert, shielded from wet trade winds by the mountain on Kauai, Wai-ale-ale, the “wettest spot on earth.” Wai-ale-ale receives 460 inches of rainfall per year.

The Robinson family, which owns Ni’ihau, has maintained sheep ranches there.

A stunning form of folk art comes from Ni’ihau. These are Ni’ihau shell leis, tiny shells strung from many strands. These tiny luminous shells come in various colors, and so whole families collect them and sort them for size and color. Then the artist, usually a woman, sets to work, punching a hole in each shell using an awl often made from a bicycle spoke (there are no cars on the island). About half the shells shatter at this point. She chooses colors in such a way as to make a final product that is textured with color.

These tiny shells are still found on Ni’ihau, but not on neighboring Kauai where agricultural runoff has tended to kill off the shell-makers. The resulting shell leis are rare, hard to find, and precious.

Hawaiian legend has it that Ni’ihau is the oldest Hawaiian island: the volcano goddess Pele had her original home on Ni’ihau. Then she traveled to Kauai, Oahu, and moved eastward until she found the Big Island of Hawaii, where she is today. But scientists say Kauai was formed before Ni’ihau, which is sort of a side vent from the volcano that formed Kauai. The Hawaiian islands were formed as a plate of earth’s crust moved slowly across an active lava vent. As the crust moved slowly, Kauai was formed, then Oahu, and so on. Ni’ihau’s current form is as an eroded lava dome on the eastern side of the island. Much of the rest is flat and sandy, with a couple of freshwater lakes.

Seeing the low lava dome of Ni’ihau from the southwest side of Kauai is tantalizing. You can find a map of Ni’ihau. You can even find pictures of rock formations on Ni’ihau. What if you are dying to see for yourself? If you are willing to pay for the privilege, you can go–the Robinson family allows a few helicopter tours to remote beaches on Ni’ihau. Or they may let you take a hunting safari to shoot feral bighorn sheep and Polynesian boars, when those populations need culling. Or you can scuba dive offshore–no permission needed.

All that is available from Kauai, Ni’ihau’s big sister island 17 miles away. Kauai has immense charms of its own; not only does it have the usual beaches and surf, but it has incredible beauty on its northwest coast, called Na Pali, or The Cliffs.